You’re Not Your Data Access

Thursday, June 11, 2009 - Seems I touched off a bit of a “swirl” with a comment I made on my last blog post:

I think, in general, the .NET crowd overthinks and over-engineers just about everything

I said as much in my MIX presentation, where I basically challenged ASP.NET developers to “embrace their inner scripter” and stop building rockets. I have a fairly strong opinion on this – and I’ll save that for another time – but I think it’s high time to remind folks that there’s a lot more to an application then how you get your app gets it’s freak on with your database. Good Morning! I remember watching Fight Club for the very first time back in the thick of the very first DotCom bubble. I was feeling pretty ill that day so I stayed home and watched the DVD, and was pulled in pretty dramatically. One line still resonates with me:

You're not your job. You're not how much money you have in the bank. You're not the car you drive. You're not the contents of your wallet. You're not your f******* khakis.

I feel the same way about building software: You’re Not Your Data Access. When I watched that movie I had just bought a nice pair of $180 Kenneth Cole shoes to wear to a client’s VC meeting, to go with my groovy business-casual Cornflower Blue button down shirt. I clearly remember looking over at my closet – the feeling of fashion sobriety coming over me – wondering what I had turned into (if you knew me then you’d know I don’t like wearing that kind of stuff. I’m happy in a white t-shirt and shorts). I had this same feeling when I popped my head out of the .NET community just 4 years ago (before I worked at Microsoft) to see what this “Rails thing” was all about. I remember the feeling well – and it was very, very sobering and inspiring at the same time. I remember creating an application in fairly short order with all the requisite pieces put where they needed to be put, with every tutorial urging me to “stop thinking – just build”. Camaro Programming The .NET platform is pretty dang powerful. It lets you build your own personal Tower of Babel if you so choose, and it can abstract away the very fabric of space-time if you let it. In short it’s a killer set of tools that any mechanically-inclined person would love to use. So naturally it can be very easily abused! Consider my good friend Eric. I’ve written about Eric a few times before – but in summary he’s my token wrench-head friend that loves his engines and American cars. I lived with this guy for years and he rapidly filled up our garage with parts and *crap* from every car he’d ever owned. And he could dutifully tell you which part went to which car and what that part did – no matter if it was useless. Eric built and maintained a hunk of junk 1968 Capri which we used to call “The Crappy”. This thing could drive – and I mean really drive – I think Eric pushed it to 180 mph once on a closed race course. It had that sound that all muscle cars make – the sound that makes your ribs shake and your inner 16 yr old say “coooooolll!”. The problem was that no one ever wanted to drive in it. It smelled, it was ugly, and it absolutely sucked the gas down. Eric would steadfastly defend his Crappy because “it was the easiest car in the world to work on” and “could blow doors on any production car from any country”. “Yah but when do you really need to go 180 miles an hour man?” “When I race dammit” I don’t need to draw the parallels here. I think you get it. Let it Go Already I want to be perfectly clear about what it is I’m saying here, and that is that it’s very, very easy for the geek inside us to whisper sweetly in our ears, saying “this Super Massive Paradigm Shifter will be the biggest application EVAR… don’t mess it up!”. I felt this very sensation when starting … well every app that I ever made. I don’t like being wrong – no one does. So defensively I’ll be sure to include patterning where I can, making sure to separate out my projects whenever it … seems like I’ll crap for not separating out what I’m doing into another project. I’ll use enums instead of boolean parameters. Oh wait, no I won’t. I’ll be sure to avoid Singletons I’ll absolutely never use Stored Procedures, I mean seriously never, ever, ever (unless Rob Howard tells me to). Or maybe unless my boss tells me to. I’ll let Jeff decide. I’ll always use Stored Procedures. I won’t use NHibernate I won’t use any ORM for that matter. Seriously - Never. Well I might use both… I won’t use Code-coverage to tell me anything. I’ll be sure to use Code-coverage data to tell me everything. I’ll make sure my method and variables are named properly on Fridays. Reflection? Not a chance. Unless Rick says it’s OK. I won’t use Extreme Programming (I’ll be sure to use Lean… whatever that is) I’ll be sure not to have scrums. I’ll also be sure not to multi-task. I won’t use configuration either – hard-coding FTW! I won’t use static methods I won’t use extension methods I’ll keep Native American stereotypes out of my code. I’ll make sure that all my methods are public and never sealed or internal I’ll check twice before I use any of these evil keywords. I’ll also make double damn sure not to use regions in my code – ever. I won’t use VB (who would?) and I’ll be sure to use C# with great care. I won’t use Composite Keys in my database And I’ll be very, very sure to keep away from Norway.

You wake up at Seatac, SFO, LAX. You wake up at O'Hare, Dallas-Fort Worth, BWI. Pacific, mountain, central. Lose an hour, gain an hour. This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time. You wake up at Air Harbor International. If you wake up at a different time, in a different place, could you wake up as a different person

Let. It. Go. Summary Simplicity is beautiful. Simple doesn’t mean hard-coding, it doesn’t mean cutting corners or being sloppy – it means building what you’ve been asked to build, not a rocket to Saturn and most of the time it’s a skateboard to the corner store. Not every application needs to be stitched together from Codebetter posts and Twitter rants. Focus on what’s important – the experience, not what’s under the hood. You’ll change that quite a few times no matter what you think :).